Kinds of Readings

A definition of at least two terms is in order. I'm making up my own definitions from memory here, so you can compare these to what your dictionary says. Note that mine are more detailed, though.

An epic is a long story or narrative poem closely associated with a particular culture and known to most people of that culture. It has these characteristics:

  1. It begins in the middle of the dramatic action.
  2. It has a background of warfare.
  3. It has a background of the supernatural. Often there's a suggestion that the key battles are started and ended by divine forces for divine reasons, or that the hero must participate in the conflict for a divinely ordained purpose other than the obvious earthly purpose of the war. Usually that purpose has something to do with spiritual knowledge he must gain and pass on to others through the legends that will surround his victory and character.
  4. It has a grand scale and a cast of thousands of characters, though not all of these characters are of equal importance.
  5. It has a background of travel. Usually a long journey is undertaken either to the scene of a war or home from a war, and the route of the journey is manipulated by spiritual forces in order to teach certain lessons.
  6. The hero is usually both a warrior and a spiritual teacher. Often he starts only as a warrior but evolves into a spiritual teacher along the way. That happens naturally as he confronts death, either that of a comrade, his own, or both.
  7. The hero is often not the king of his people at the beginning of the story. When this is the case, he either challenges the king or becomes the rightful king through merit. Alternatively, he may start out as a king but lose his kingship for awhile or temporarily set it aside in order to pursue a more urgent goal, such as a war in a distant country.
  8. The hero often is a child of a god or the gods. Unusual circumstances are said to surround his birth.
  9. The hero's character reflects the values of the culture that tells his story. Different epic heroes therefore have different primary virtues. One might be more brave than intelligent, another more intelligent than brave. One might value truthfulness, another not, or a third might think there's no such thing as truth. One might place his private principles or allegiances above his loyalty to his society; another might sacrifice these for his society.

A myth is a story told to explain the origin of some basic problem or situation that's a fundamental aspect of human experience. These stories are not always regarded as factually accurate by the people who tell them. When they are regarded as fact, they're also regarded as sacred. Anyway, whether they're treated as fact or not, they're allegorical in character. (In other words, the characters are symbolic. They actually represent specific virtues, vices, problems, or other ideas.)

In this class, we'll read any potentially sacred material--for example, selections from the Bible--as legend, not as fact. We'll interpret them as literature without debating whether or not the events actually happened. In many cases they did, in others they didn't, and in others it's not possible to tell. But we won't debate whether they're true or not because that doesn't concern us.

Examples of the issues explored by some common myths:

 

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